Thorvald Jensen
Early Life (261-278) Thorvald Jensen was born Jan Anders Valdemar Madsen of the House Falsen on 26 June 261 OE, the only son to Mads Lauritz Edvin Sigmundsen and Agnethe Jørgendatter in Kolding, Denmark. Though his family was not among the wealthiest of the aristocracy, they were the wealthiest family in Kolding. His family initially wanted him to join the Scandinavian Army as an officer, but Jensen had other interests and instead applied to study at the University of Copenhagen. Jensen's early life was largely uneventful; the only thing of note is the tragedy of his beloved pet tortoise. At the age of three, he had discovered a tortoise in the garden of his home, and being a small child, took a liking to the animal. He had settled on the name "Thorvald Jensen" for the tortoise through no clear logic, and later took on the name as his revolutionary alias. At the age of eight his father had brought Jensen along on a trip to Esbjerg, concerning matters with the reigning bishop of the Diocese of East Jutland. Angered that Jensen had brought his pet, the bishop threw the tortoise out of a tower window to its death. Jensen would later swear to avenge his fallen pet and refers to the event as the "Defenestration of Esbjerg." University and Professorship University and Early Professorship (278-283) Though none of his studies initially piqued his interest, he became enthralled with the Old Norse literature. General convention at the time stated that Icelandic was the only surviving dialect of Old Norse, but that claim aroused suspicion in the young Dane. Combined with recent decipherment of Elder Futhark inscriptions by the Norwegian philologist Sophus Bugge, Jensen began to investigate as best as he could, usually to the detriment of his assigned work. After barely graduating with a master's degree in philology in the spring of 282, Jensen immediately applied for a professorship in philology at his alma mater. With the help of Sophus Bugge, Jensen was granted a professorship and began to conduct actual research on the various Nordic languages to conduct the first tests of the comparative method. Schoolwork and linguistics, though, were not Jensen's only happenings in this period of his life. In January of 280, a snowstorm had trapped him in a coffeeshop for a night while workers dug the store out. There he spent the night conversing with a woman named Sofie Juul, one year his junior and another frequenter of the coffeeshop. The two married in March the next year, and though the stress of completing his education was great, he considered himself to be continuously happy with life during his marriage to Sofie. However, it was not to last. Sofie died due to complications in childbirth in late November 283; the child was stillborn. Development of Comparative Method (283-289) Though Jensen did also teach, as any professor did at the University of Copenhagen, his main interest was in the development of the Comparative Theory and the sorting out of the relations between the languages of the North. That being said, he often let promising students work with him on matters of research; two notable ones, who gained proffessorships with his and Bugge's assistance after they had graduated, were Rasmus Rask and Karl Verner, both of whom went on to further develop the Comparative Method after Jensen accepted the position of Ambassador to Salkuviet. With his ever-growing team of linguists, Jensen was able to pick out the genetic relations between the Nordic languages, tracing them back to the dialect continuum that was Old Norse, and the ancestral language of the Elder Futhark inscriptions: Proto-Norse. Thus having codified the history of the Nordic language family to the best of their knowledge in 288, the team split up. Rask began travelling the world to do linguistic research, and Verner worked with the Nordgardian philologist, Jacob Grimm, to connect the Nordic family with Rikisch and Yiddish, which had notable similarities to the Nordic family. Jensen, meanwhile, began to work on codifying the remaining languages of Scandinavia in a similar fashion. It was in this time that he began to work on gathering information on Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, and the Sami languages: what he called the Finno-Samic language family. As he was mourning the loss of his beloved Sofie, his future wife Sigrid Bille took interest in the short philologist. The two began seeing each other in the middle of 285, and with the urging of both families, the two married that same year. Though the relationship was never anything special, Sigrid was the daughter of the prestigious general, Aksel Bille. Furthermore, Jensen was the only son of Mads Falsen, who had a vested interest in keeping his Kolding estate within the family, and preferrably within his descendants. Jensen and Sigrid had two children before his grammar of Proto-Norse was published: a son named Lars and a daughter named Hjørdis. Another daughter, Edith, followed soon after. Finno-Samic and Colonists (289-294) Jensen's research into the Finno-Samic languages started with the necessity to create grammars. Unlike the Nordic languages, most of the living Finno-Samic languages had not yet had grammars written. Finnish and Estonian were the only two with grammars prior to Jensen's research, leaving Karelian and all of the Samic languages undocumented. Regardless, the project went smoothly; by 293, a rudimentary grammar of Proto-Finno-Samic was published. As Jensen then went on to attempt, in vain, to connect the Nordic and Finno-Samic families, a second son by the name of Egil was born to him in 292. Then, in 294, the colonists landed. Jensen was ecstatic. He traveled to the new colony as soon as possible with the intent of learning the colonists' language. Though initial communication was difficult, he managed to obtain materials by which he could learn the colonists' language in Copenhagen. Ambassador to Salkuviet (294-) In late December, 294, Jensen received an offer from the Scandinavian government to be their ambassador to Salkuviet. They had caught wind of his ability to speak the colonists' language, and had (for whatever reason) elected to send the unhappily married linguist who had been growing less and less fond of the Patriarch's government for the majority of his life as their ambassador. Jensen accepted instantly, and began to prepare for the trip, sending in his resignation to the university so they could hurriedly find a replacement before the winter holiday was over. He arrived at the colony in mid-January with a handful of statesmen and soldiers in accompanyment.